The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Romford, Greater London*

Romford, Greater London Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Pompadours
• Golden Lion Pub and St.Edwards Chuch (in market)
• Town Hall
• The central library is indeed fantastically 70s and actually almost well designed. The North Street bus garage has a glimmer of ambition and the American 30s about it. The building next to Slime&Scurvy and above that shoddy furniture shop is in need of repair but promisingly Art Deco-ish. Would make nice flats. And it would be lovely to live beside the nightclub in Greater London, wouldn't it?
• Romford central library. An amazing spot with the appearance,atmosphere and floor polish smell of the 70's.
• Railway Station, it got me out of town!!
• Favourite Building would have to be Time
• My favorite building use to be little known place over Bedfords Park. For years we didnt know what it was but laterr I discoved it was an old ice house for the manor that use to be there.
• Time & Envy - South St.
• Some nice houses on the outskirts but Romford itself is one of the most ugliest places I have ever seen and unfortunately I come from that area. I would never ever go back unless it was life/death.
• The little Church up Church Road (Noak Hill) it's very quaint, a friend of mine married there a couple of years ago & I would recommend it to anyone looking for a place to tie the knot.
• Rumford Market...YES RUMFORD not ROMFORD! because the twats cannot spell. It is a shite hole..of tacky stalls and pick'n'mix sweet shop. It also contains RAGE (SEE SHOPS maybe)
• moon and stars toilets
• Has to be the old Dolphin centre, because of it's unique pyramid shape.
• st Edwards church in the market. just look at it
• The fountain WAS ok but on my return sixteen years later I have now fount it to be non-existent !!
• Saffron House, South Street (a mecca for the thrifty).
• The Golden Lion,South street,a nice old clapperboarded pub of considerable age.

Demolish It Now Building

• Freddie Whale's, Morland Arms: whoever blew up that phone box in North Street had an unfortunate wide aim.
• The derelict Dolphin is awful.
• Nuclear bombs work wonders in this department!
• Railway Staion ,so I cant come back!!
• Time and envy is a big old pile of pants! Also the new look dollywoods (new carpet apparently and not a lot else)! Brilliant if you are a complete essex geezer or a dodgy trender type! In my opinion they should both be crushed or turned into a hip happenin indie club!!! Full Stop!
• The Dolphin
• Id like to see the whole of Harold Hill leveled and turned into a park.Build luxury houses for all the people that live there or kick the rich people out of Hornchurch and let the Hill folk have a taste of the good life.
• Scanky Rumford Shopping Hall in Market Place in favour of a modern replacement.
• westham shop
• The Dolphin - it's an eyesore!!
• Demolish The Dolphin, and build a place for live bands (signed or unsigned) to gig. That way Essex bands like prodigy, blur and underworld can come home and re-establish their cockney roots, as well as liven up the night life. Havering Council...sort it out!
• Peacocks!
• golden lion
• To save the hassle and time of making a decision, I'd say demolish EVERYTHING inside the ring road - except maybe for the Golden Lion pub and church opposite at the end of the Market Place, the little that's left of the former brewery on High Street is OK too, but the rest - bye bye...
• the Waterloo road flats
• The Brewry has gone. OH NO, NO MORE BEER
• The Dolphin. This 'leisure center' was open for about ten years. Why has it closed? How can other towns keep them open when we can not? Was it bad planning? Where did the money go? Who built it? Romford demands answers!!!
• Hollywood
• Debenhams in the market place because when it was built a lot of old ,nice buildings were demolished to make way for this monstrosity.

The Best Things

• Meeting up with your mates from home after being away at Uni and realising that Romford never changes.
• Always seeing someone you know in Romford or collier row. The 294 has got to be the best bus ever alongside 103. They go everywhere you need. Both these buses has provided some of the best experiances i've ever known, met me some of the best friends and also my girlfriend. (also goes near fb school). Lots of parks, especially lawns park. Also being so close to lots of areas, becoming more london than essex. lots of quality buses and hangouts.
• Not a lot these days apart from the nightlife.
• It's only a push and pull away from Upminster !!!
• The People, the Welcome, The Friendliness
• erm. Quite a wide variety of shops.
• variety of shops and it's easy to get to
• Everything that makes Romford what it is
• I don't live there anymore but, my x does and all her two faced church going chums!
• the birds are fit, I have been around the world (10 years) Romford has shorter skirts and more birds up for it, New York comes close.
• Announcing 'I'm from Romford' is actually a great way to break the ice with strangers. After all, everyone has a story to tell about Essex Girls. Useful for parties at university. If anyone from Havering ever manages to go.
• Leaving
• This will be brief, there is not a lot of good things about Romford. After 27 years here I am still looking. The best things (the old buildings they should have loved and cherished) have all been bulldozered for the sake of progress! What has Romford got left - no soul! (Except for the Cellar bar perhaps) which has been going strong for more years than anyone cares to remember, albeit now rehoused in a new (not so good) venue. Romford was OK in the 50's when they had the animals in the Market, but now they have the 2 legged sort - and not so attractive, but stink just as much.
• the people are great;
• I went to broxhill school during the late 60s early 70s had a great time ther ,good friends. what ever happended to it. moved from harold hill 25 yrs ago.
• The best thing about Romford for me was the train to Heathrow and the plane to New Zealand.
• I have recently moved to Romford from Kent and may i say what a nice change the people here are, everyone i have meet are open friendly and yes say exactly what they are thinking ! It makes a refreshing change from the people from Kent
• Nightlife surpasses most places - even some major towns and cities.
• The best thing is brining people there on a night out from far away places and watching them cringe and delight at how totally appicable the Essex joke culture really is. The best thing for me was moving away. I have met some amazing people and true friends from there but they are miracles compared to the general population. They have paved nicely the road from the station which does improve the aesthetic pleasure of the area.
• Your guaranteed to bump into someone you know no matter where you go out in Romford. It's a lively place to be, certainly the next place to be outside of London.
• 'Best Things'? ironic...i like it.
• I'm proud to have come from Romford, especially Collier Row. Looking back, the friends I made were the funniest, most open-minded and loyal people I've ever met. I miss the place, even the so-called "nutters" who were often much more comical than they wanted to be and the shit things which did give the place a strange sort of charater!
• Loads of pubs.
• The'ROMFORD RAIDERS' ICE HOCKEY TEAM. Top ice hockey entertaiment.Watch out for grudge matches with Chelmsford and Isle of Wight.Top value entertaiment on a sunday evening 5-8pm.Also 'ice disco' excellent night out.Dont forget nearby Hornchurch fantastic choice of restaurants notibly 'SIMPLY BLUES' American style diner 'CAFE UNO' pasta etc.Plus Indian, Chinese,French and many more.
• It's not (entirely) fair to criticise Romford for it's "greyness" (the people who live there, that's another matter, with honorable exceptions of course) It has LOTS of parks, some of which are lovely - Raphael in the centre is the most famous (Cottons, also in the centre is major drug-dealing haunt and best avoided), but Oldchurch and Lawns are also wonderful places to relax and chill out. Lawns and Bedfords Country Park are blessed with superb views over all of East and South East London, including the millennium dome!
• People have mentioned that no-one's pretentious, and that the girls aren't that sluttish etc., and all that's very true. But i don't think anyone's really got across the open atmosphere. The one thing i miss (i now live in the godforsaken midlands)is the feeling of open-mindedness - sometimes quite surprisingly!
• Coming out of romford station, only to be welcomed by a string of inviting pubs!
• The way you can always find a punch up/murder to watch on a Friday night. Try outside Hollywoods
• Ease of access into town (London)
• Great atmosphere and people
• V. near London I live here It actually looks quite nice these days There is stuff to do Well policed Lots of shops, with different things
• Rhapheals Park and Bedfords park.
• Romford is an OK town, been there twice, plenty of shops in a rather dated shopping complex affair. Low class of people generally, not much to see, swimming pool closed down, but coming from Northern Ireland it's a damn side better than any town there.
• A great place to come from - but a lousy place to go to. It is the sort of place where the only historic building - the house that Captain Blood took the crown jewels after stealing them - was knocked down to make way for an advertising hoarding. It is part of the only London borough which doesn't have a single blue plaque to mark the home of anyone famous. Its the sort of place where a decent pub like the White Hart gets remamed the Bitter End. Bitter? No. Just bloody glad I had the common sense to leave the bloody dump 26 years ago and move north, where there are real people, great football, and the beer is so much better! Bruce Hubbard - an ex-clocksider (if anyone reading this is old enough to know where the clockside was - now under a housing estate!)
• The thing I love about living in Romford is that its like living in London without actually being IN London, i'ts so close that you can hop on a train and be in central London in about half an hour for less than four quid. I think the pubs are good, the people friendly and down to earth and there are some good places to eat out, Bella Pasta, a great Italian without the huge prices, and JD wetherspoons the Moon & Stars, great food at great prices, and there is the market of course, great if you find all the stalls which do Faith and Shelleys shoes at about a third of the shop price.
  The thing I don't like?? Well it gets boring after a while but that's the same with everywhere I think - if you get bored of the shops you are only a short bus or car ride away from Ilford, and of course Lakeside Thurrock, which is great for shops - we also have a good cinema, an Odeon and an ABC which is good and also keeps the price low at ALL times.
• Romford market is the bollocks at Christmas time!!!! From a former resident, now living in Australia.
• It has no pretentions.

The Worst Things

• Pigeons, I am not cruel however is that woman still insistant upon feeding them under the station? I remember having to leg it under there scared of being dumped on!
• Meeting up with your mates from home after being away at Uni and realising that Romford never changes.
• Romford is well known for boys with long hair tied in a ponytail. Girls all wear bomber and puffa jackets even when goin clubbing
• Not having an underground station. Why does hainult, grange hill etc get em but not us? Even upminster hornchurch and elm park get one! Unfair.
• The worst thing about Romford is ROMFORD itself - bulldoze it and put a Waitrose in its place.
• Most things.
• Vivid and Elite - innocent people get murdered there (and drinks are tooo expensive)!!
• The constant nagging of double glazing salesmen and religious people
• Too many really cheap pound shops, like the one opposite where Halfords used to be. Too many 14 year old girls in Schott jackets up to their armpits, who think they're WELL 'ARD. (typical essex girlz)...SAD!
• Sad gits trying to put it down but realy love and those Peons that allow it to happen.
• to many people from inner London
• Unfailingly being confronted with poorly-educated, badly-dressed, humourless, odourous, racist, homophobic natives is an ever-present danger in any provincial town that's overshadowed by a city, and Romford is no exception. The narcotics are pretty bad, too.
• Going back
• the crowds on a friday and saturday night
• Too many Essex Tories, especially the sort that still worship Thatcher.
• The worst thing about Romford ( england) was the education system. I spent 4 years at school with an English teacher and all he ever done was talk about his cat!Thats why my spelling leaves a bit to be desired.By the way he would be dead now so his name was Jumbo Jarvis.
• Why do Romford girls get dressed up on Sunday ? I have recently moved here and found this very challenging, looking good on Sunday !
• Pubs, people, music taste, small town mindedness, slags, fights in the streets, state of the streets, litter, lary men shouting obscenities, high police presence due to indigenous population, access to decent shopping facilities.
• The occasional trouble you get, like a couple of murders in the town centre that really shouldn't have happened - there is already too much voilence in this world without people from Romford adding to it!!
• Need more space to write this article. Summeray: IT's the people, atmosphere, buildings, language, accent, culture and environment that make Romford bad If you Nuked the fuck out of the Place...It would be the best Quick Fix available. Hey Kids...why not try de-railling the Toxic waste train at the Upminster change Rail line-a perfect spot accessable and hidden, between Gidea Park and Romford. The Track is accessable from the iron bridge (Where all the unclean dirty Hommes go to connduct sexual relations) of Victora Rd. The Train travels twice a week reaching the disscued point of the track around 4 am) cannot give excat days of travel...do your own dirty work you lazy bastards.
• The Skin heads of Romford or sould I saw the would be skins of romford if they were more action and less talk...
• The shops!
• The worst thing about Romford is the lack of imagination from the council too much money spent on the market not enough on community projects 'free meeting places for 13-18yr olds'. Lack of imagination for use of open space 'old fountain and toilets' in middle of Romford is disgrace should be well thoughtout seating and meeting area.
• The abysmally low cultural and social level of the town. The lack of character, the shallow materialism this is prevalent thereabouts, the "car culture" and selfish lack of values. Harold Hill.
• Not enough people promote the place! It's fantastic!
• Knocking down the old post office sorting office in Angel Way. and knocking down the old Romford brewary 300 years of John Bull bitter gone for some more bloody shops
• The one-way system throught the town centre (even us locals get lost) The watterloo estate.
• Right where to start? The pissed up thugs down by the station every Friday & Saturday night? The racism? The homophobia? The fact that everyone looks the same? Everyone stares at you if you don't look the same? The racism? Shall I go on?
• Too bloody expensive to get to from Australia.
• They've knocked down the bloody Brewery, fine, build shops but couldnt they do it inside the old walls? Gotta watch your stuff, people will have no qualms about smashing your car windows and knicking your radio Need cash to do anything
• Everyone thinks they are so hard, and tries to start on everyone
• Ring road round the market place.
• The women in Romford are not your typical Essex girls. They are worse (except my sister, sorry sis). The main feature of Romford are the shops, other than shops Romford hasn't much to offer. But as small towns go it is not all that bad.
• Don't bother to race around 'The Romford Circuit' - all you will do is get nicked.

The Knowhere Guide started out as a list of places to skateboard in the UK. It is a compilation of (unedited) information and views supplied by users like yourself. It is not a conventional tourist guide!

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Credits

Last updated: 2008-07-03